This is a posthumous collection of nine stories – a moving reminder of the exceptional talent of this late and great Australian writer, with a foreword by her friend, Charlotte Wood. Blain died eight years ago, in the same week as her mother, Anne Deveson.
It’s impossible to read these stories and not read something extra into the words, despite this being a form of intentional fallacy (where the reader presumes to know exactly what the writer intended). There is, however, poignancy in the titles, ‘Last Days’ and ‘Still Breathing’, and in a sentence from ‘Dear Professor Brewster’: ‘I’ve come to an age where I can no longer assume good health with the confidence I once had’.
‘Australia Square’ is the lead story, detailing an incident when the narrator was five, involving her baby brother and the effect this had on her mother. Mother-daughter relationships is a theme Blain often returned to and has added weight in ‘Dear Professor Brewster’, where a daughter tries to convince the medical profession of her mother’s deteriorating cognitive function. Infatuation, sex with ambiguous consent, and accidental reconnection appears in ‘Far From Home’.
Blain’s concerns with global heating and subsequent power outages are apparent in ‘Last Days’, but sits beneath the main narrative of love, birth and death. ‘Ship to Shore’ expresses the tyranny of distance between partners after the death of a child.
The saddest thing for me comes at the very end of We All Lived in Bondi Then, where there are no acknowledgements. This gives a mixed sense of both unfinished business and finality. The acknowledgement, therefore, must come from us – her readers – to recognise Blain’s skill and remember her as one of our best writers.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter, which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers’ Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgia’s works include The Secret Lives of Men, Too Close to Home, and the YA novel Darkwater.
In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 University of Queensland Fiction Book Award.
Georgia passed away in December 2016.
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